Post-individualism
Severin Matusek and
Post-individualism
Severin Matusek and
Brad Stulberg • 9 highlights
amazon.com
This was illuminating. My notes:
Negative power is the way people have been control for most of human history.
Negative power means being controlled by prohibition or limitation, telling people you can’t do this or that. Today, people are controlled through positive power. Positive power tells you you can be whatever you want, you’re in charge, so you have no limitations. As long as you can put your head down, focus, grind, achieve your short term goals, set new ones and achieve those.
Authenticity is an ad campaign of neo-liberalism. It's a self absorbed nightmare. People now have to define themselves through themselves without any sort of help from the outside. Everyone is their own little personal project. Everything we learn is not just learning anymore. It's an investment in ourselves. Everything is about mentally optimizing yourself working, producing more efficiently with your mind.
Contribute your skills to an existing effort – make it possible. Build the website, raise the funds, recruit the talent, plan the events. As Bill McKibben puts it, “Faced with the kind of crises that we face, the most important thing that an individual can do is to not always be an individual.” Move from I to we .
Throughout the last few decades, our economic system has transformed society into a market, citizens into consumers, and communities into individuals